Within five minutes, the occasional drops had turned to a gentle rain.
With Asahina on the back, I rode my bike as fast as I could to Tsuruya’s house. It was mostly downhill, which made pedaling easier. It took us less than half the time it took to get to the mountain and only a third the effort.
As we arrived through the drizzle, there was someone waiting for us.
“Hey there! Welcome back!” Tsuruya was wearing the same traditional clothing as yesterday, carrying an umbrella in one hand as she smiled cheerfully and opened the gate for us. “Where’d you guys get off to? Nah, never mind! I’m sure you had your reasons! Tsuru-nyan hears no evil and speaks no evil! She does see you, though. Wait—Miku—I mean, Michiru! You’re super dirty! Let’s get you into the bath, hmm?” Tsuruya said in her usual rapid-fire way. “You must be freezing! C’mon, into the bath with you! We’ll take one together! You too, Kyon! I’ll wash your back for you. We’ve even got a traditional cypress bath!”
I would’ve cried tears of gratitude at the proposal, but I could tell from her face that Tsuruya was only joking. Haruhi would say things she really meant while sounding like she was kidding, but Tsuruya would crack jokes with a straight face.
“I’ll just head home. You take care of Asahina—Michiru, I mean.”
I turned to leave, but Tsuruya stopped me. “Hang on just a sec.”
She held the umbrella over me, then produced from the breast pocket of her traditional jacket a piece of paper that had been rolled up and tied with twine.
“Haru-nyan asked for this. Would you give it to her, Kyon?”
She looked completely serious. The thick, aging parchment was partially bug-eaten in places, looking every inch like the kind of paper that would have a map leading to buried treasure on it.
“What’s this?”
“A treasure map!” Tsuruya answered quickly, grinning. “I found it a while ago poking around in the old storehouse. I figured why not give it to Haru-nyan, but then I forgot all about it.”
Was it okay to just give it to Haruhi? I asked. I mean, it was a treasure map.
“Sure, why not? It’ll be a pain to go all the way out there and dig it up. If you find anything, just kick me back ten percent. One of our ancestors was the one who buried it, see, and according to family records, he was a crazy old geezer who loved pranks. I bet he thought he’d get his descendants good! There’s either nothing there or something totally pointless.”
Surely it would be the former.
I took the rolled-up parchment as respectfully as I could manage, but Tsuruya just flippantly handed it over, so there was only so much graciousness I could show.
“Make sure you give it to Haru-nyan, ’kay?” Tsuruya gave a gleeful smile, one eye closed, while a stiff Asahina looked back and forth between the supposed treasure map and me, hastily looking down when she noticed my gaze. What was going on? I wondered. Was there really classified information regarding the treasure hunt? I knew she was sad about being sent back in time with no idea why, but she seemed to have some hang-up about the treasure hunt as well.
“Here, Kyon, I’ll let you borrow the umbrella. Take care on your way home! Bye!”
Tsuruya waved good-bye, and I saw Asahina give a small wave herself before the two disappeared behind the closing gate.
I stood there in the rain, umbrella in one hand, ancient scroll in the other.
A terrible loneliness struck me hard enough that I wanted to break in and help myself to a bath. Was Tsuruya having this effect on me? When you were with someone that cheerful, then left her side, it was like a festival had ended. She was like a one-woman carnival.
“Damn, it’s cold out here.”
I rested the umbrella over my shoulder and started walking my bike.
Haruhi, Asahina, even Nagato—they could all make me crazy.
“Crap, I’m really hungry.”
I didn’t see Koizumi on my way back, even though for once I wouldn’t have minded talking to him.
The next morning, four days after the other Asahina had appeared in the broom closet, the previous day’s rainclouds were quickly moving east, and the clear sky facilitated some serious radiative cooling.
The uphill hike to school helped warm me a bit, but I knew that half an hour in my unheated classroom would make the sweat I’d worked up only chill me further.
I crossed the front grounds and got to the school entryway, then took a deep breath before opening my shoe locker. I knew that the messages from the future wouldn’t stop with the last one, and thus I expected there to be another one this morning, and who knew what I’d be ordered to do this time. But my hesitation was pointless, since after all, I had to get my school slippers.
And indeed, there was a letter.
In fact, there were three.
“C’mon, Asahina, you’ve gotta be kidding me…”
They were even numbered. Each envelope had a number carefully handwritten on it: #3, #4, and #6. Three, four, and… six?
“So were the two earlier ones number one and number two? Guess that makes the first one number zero.”
But why did they jump from four to six? What happened to five? Had she written the wrong number?
I shoved them in my pocket and headed directly for the bathroom, which had by this time become routine.
I opened the envelopes in ascending order.
There wasn’t much time before the bell would ring, so I scanned them quickly, then headed out of the restroom. On the way out, I caught a glimpse of my own face in the mirror and saw that I looked as confused as I felt.
What was Asahina the Elder trying to get us all to do? And while I’m on the subject, I wouldn’t even ask what the point was of sending a completely random man to the hospital, then moving a rock from one place to another. I really wanted to know, though.
I headed to my classroom, filled with half-formed misgivings, where a strangely agitated individual was waiting for me.
“Kyon!”
It was Haruhi who called out my strange nickname and came running over—a girl who, until yesterday, had been strangely melancholy.
“I heard all about it; hurry up and show it to me!”
Just as I was momentarily wondering what the insanely grinning Haruhi was talking about, she interrupted.
“Don’t tell me you forgot it. I’m talking about the thing you got from Tsuruya! You know, the super-awesome one.”
I knew she was mercurial, but surely even Haruhi’s mood swings had a limit. What had happened to the gloomy, almost sick-seeming girl of yesterday? Don’t tell me she’d been replaced by an impostor, I told her.
“Don’t be stupid. I’m always me, and there’s only one me in the whole world!” replied Haruhi with a triumphant smile. “Anyway! C’mon, show it to me! If you forgot it, I’m gonna make you sprint home to get it.”
I just bet she would. Our idle classmates were starting to stare at us. I told her that I tried to live as unobtrusively as I could.
“A goal that boring should be written down on a paper airplane and launched off the roof. Living unobtrusively or conspicuously—none of that is relevant. If you want to talk about your life, do it three seconds before you die!”
I didn’t want to live a life that could be explained in three seconds, but in any case, I helplessly—well, not quite helplessly—got the ancient scroll Tsuruya had given me out of my bag, whereupon it was immediately snatched out of my hand. The owner of the hand that had done the snatching undid the string that held it closed, and then spoke to me in a lowered voice.
“Hey, did you look at this?”
“No, not yet.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I didn’t particularly want to.”
“Even though it’s a treasure map? That doesn’t excite you a little bit?”
I already knew there wasn’t even one scrap of treasure, so the only phrase that came to mind here was “pointless waste of effort,” so tell me, please, how I was supposed to get excite
d about that? Thus, I’d tossed Tsuruya’s terrible souvenir into my bag and hadn’t given it a second glance. I’d had other things to worry about, and I still did. To be perfectly honest, I was thinking about trying to talk Haruhi out of this whole treasure-hunting business, but she was already unrolling the scroll.
“Honestly, I don’t know what Tsuruya was thinking either—giving this thing to you, when she should’ve just given it straight to me! I guess it’s nice to get it first thing in the morning, but I was gonna make it a surprise after school…”
She seemed pleased despite her muttering, whirling around and returning to her seat. Using her pencil case and textbooks as paperweights, she spread the parchment out on her desk and absorbed herself in studying it.
I gave up and sat back down in my own seat, whereupon a new question occurred to me.
“Hey, Haruhi.”
“What?” came her quick reply.
“When did you find out Tsuruya had given me that thing?”
“Last night. I got a phone call from her,” Haruhi said without looking up. “You took Shamisen for a walk, right? Tsuruya spotted you going past her house, and that’s when she gave it to you, she said. I guess Shamisen’s feeling better. Good for him.”
I could only purse my lips at Tsuruya’s tale. I’d like to see the person who’d take a cat for a walk on a freezing, rainy night like that. There was something wrong with Haruhi if she really believed that.
She didn’t seem to notice the silence that indicated my exasperation, her eyes shining like they had at Setsubun. “Take a look at this, Kyon! This is definitely a treasure map. It says so right here!”
I looked down at Haruhi’s desk.
There on the sheet of parchment (which really belonged in a museum) was a picture and a few lines of text, along with the name of the writer. The picture was clear enough. It was done in simple brushstrokes but had skillfully captured the shape of the mountain. The writing was done in squiggly phonetic characters—and since my own classical literature textbook frequently seemed like alien writing to me, I didn’t have a prayer of reading this.
Haruhi translated for me.
“ ‘Upon this mountain is buried something rare. Those of my descendants who would seek it, dig ye here.’ ”
After that came the writer’s name.
“ ‘Fusauemon Tsuruya, 1702, Fifteenth Year of the Genroku Era.’ ”
I didn’t know how many generations back this Tsuruya was, but he’d sure left quite a thing behind. I mean, why’d he need to bury it? I wondered if it was just as Tsuruya had said, a prank reaching across time. If not, somebody would’ve dug it up in the centuries between the Genroku period and the modern era.
“So where on the mountain is it buried?” I asked, disinterested.
Haruhi traced her finger over the ink drawing. “It doesn’t say. There’s no landmark or marker. All it says is that it’s somewhere on this mountain. But that’s okay.” Her energetic gaze assaulted me. “We’ll just start digging, and eventually we’ll come to it or run out of spots to dig! It’ll be Operation Steamroller!”
So who was this “we” she was talking about? Was she just going to get the townsfolk to volunteer? I asked.
“Of course not, stupid.” Haruhi rolled the map back up and retied the twine, placing it in her desk. “We’ll just do it ourselves, obviously. You don’t want your share of the treasure to be any smaller, right?”
If my “share” were actually going to be smaller, I wouldn’t have wanted that, but a smaller share of nothing was still nothing. The bell interrupted my internal muttering, and our homeroom teacher, Mr. Okabe, entered the classroom.
“We’re meeting after school in the clubroom, got it?” said Ha-ruhi, poking me in the back with her mechanical pencil. “And keep this a secret. I want to surprise everybody. And you better act surprised too. Like you just heard about this for the first time. Seriously, I can’t believe Tsuruya spilled the beans like that…”
Haruhi continued to mutter, but it was drowned out by Mr. Okabe’s raised voice and the general din of the rest of my classmates.
So here’s a reliable technique for burning the contents of a class into your brain cells. You don’t actually need any special concentration ability. Just vaguely listen to whatever the teacher’s saying and stare at either the chalkboard or the textbook. Of course it’s better to take notes, but it’s hard to be motivated to take perfect notes every period, which is why you need the technique.
To put it simply, it comes down to this: you don’t have to concentrate on class. But you can’t think about anything besides class. After all, if you’re thinking about nothing, you get bored, and your idle brain will just remember whatever’s coming in from the ears and eyes.
Just give it a try. But please keep in mind that I got this technique from Haruhi—you could say it’s the Haruhi-style Study Technique. You don’t have to study, but you can’t think about anything besides study. But there’s no joy in that kind of life, and I found the idea of Haruhi not thinking about anything difficult to believe, so basically this had to be a crock, although there was nothing I could say to the fact that Haruhi’s grades were excellent.
All that said, it was a tall order for me at the moment. While Haruhi’s vague melancholy had bothered me quite a bit recently, her magic points seemed to have been completely restored by a single sheet of ancient paper—a turn of events I welcomed. It was one less thing for me to worry about.
In exchange, I now had three more letters’ worth of orders from Asahina the Elder. With the help of Asahina from eight days hence, I’d have to put them into action somehow. Even if I’d wanted to do so immediately, they were time-dependent, so I couldn’t just dash out of the classroom immediately and get to work—but neither could I afford to be lazy…
With all these thoughts in my head, it was no wonder I couldn’t absorb any of the class material, but at least I had a unique excuse.
After school, Haruhi herded me off to the clubroom; I felt like a tiny fish being cornered by a cormorant. Thanks to Tsuruya’s improvisation, I couldn’t use Shamisen’s health as an excuse to go home early, and on top of that, I genuinely had no other plans today.
That’s right, the letters I’d retrieved from my shoe locker made it clear that today and the next day were free. My duties would fall on the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. The reason three messages had all arrived together today was simple: after today, I wouldn’t be back at school for a while. Thanks to the holiday and the entrance exams for middle schoolers, it was a four-day weekend.
Time travelers sure did like using shoe lockers as post office boxes. I wouldn’t have minded a bit if she’d just delivered the messages to me in person. I had more than a few things I wanted to ask Asahina the Elder.
Such were the thoughts that occurred to me during class, and even now, being dragged along by Haruhi. Finally, we arrived at the literature club’s room.
“Hey! Sorry for the wait!”
I entered the room, pulled after Haruhi as she gave a cheerful yell and opened the door energetically. A strange nostalgia welled up within me, probably because it had been three whole days since I’d last hung out with the entire membership of the brigade. Apparently my attachment to the group was such that I’d have this sort of feeling after only three days.
Still feeling a bit dazed, I closed behind us the door Haruhi’d thrown open, then gave the brigade members inside another look.
My gaze first landed upon a girl sitting in the corner, school-uniformed, hair short-cropped, thick book open in front of her. Nagato regarded both Haruhi and me with her tirelessly blank expression, but soon returned her attention to the text before her. The small-framed organic android wasted neither words nor actions, her stoic, tranquil manner constant as she occupied her corner.
“Hello, there. It’s been a while.” Koizumi smiled meaningfully, the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle before him. “How’s Shamisen the First doing? If necessary, I can r
ecommend an excellent animal hospital. I have a friend whose relative operates it, and I’m told it’s very good.”
Yeah, I’ll bet. All of his connections seemed to be “excellent,” I muttered.
“I’m surprisingly well-connected, actually. In many ways,” said Koizumi, snapping a jigsaw puzzle piece into place. “If I follow those connections, I can find nearly anyone. As far as people outside my network of connections go…” he continued, spreading his arms elegantly wide, as though performing on stage. “They’d have to be people that don’t yet exist on this earth.”
He already knew aliens and time travelers, so who else could he possibly hope to be acquainted with? I didn’t want to meet any extra-dimensional travelers, that was for sure. It’d be nothing but trouble.
Koizumi chuckled and cut off his conversation with me, turning to Haruhi. “I believe you said something about holding a meeting today?”
“That’s right! A special emergency meeting.” Haruhi tossed her bag onto the brigade chief desk, then plopped down in her chair. “Mikuru! Tea, please.”
“Okay!” It was indubitably Mikuru in her maid outfit who answered adorably, then hurried over to the kettle.
Of course it was. There wasn’t any problem with Mikuru being here. Still…
“Mmm…” I murmured quietly, my mouth closed. I needed to put my thoughts in order. This wasn’t Michiru Asahina, who even now haunted Tsuruya’s house. This was the Asahina who hadn’t yet traveled a few days back in time.
As she poured hot water from the small, burbling pot, she suddenly looked up to me.
“Um, Kyon…”
She looked worried—exactly like the other Asahina who had appeared three days ago, from what was then eight days in the future. I guess that was obvious. As I was trying to prepare myself to say something, she continued.
“How is the kitty cat doing? Maybe he’s sick because we took him to such a cold place during winter vacation…”
“Uh, n-no…” I stumbled over my words. This Asahina didn’t know anything. She had no idea that five days from now, in the evening, she would jump back in time to three days before today. Man, this was getting hard to keep track of.
The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya Page 12
